Singer — whose $25 billion Elliott Management has two board seats and a 6 percent stake in US oil and gas producer Hess — believes the Mideast country’s fingerprints are all over the recent 50 percent-plus decline in the price of oil since last June.

That thought runs contra to the view of many energy pundits, who say rampant US exploration and production in recent years have created too much oil for the world’s fragile economies to consume.

OPEC historically has exerted some control over the price by limiting output.

But Saudi Arabia declined to exercise its control over OPEC at its November meeting and did not press to lower production — thus pushing already soft prices into free fall.

Singer, normally a supporter of market forces, claims that the price collapse was “engineered” to put higher-cost rivals out of business.

‘The shortfall in demand which caused this crash is actually not that much, and global economic conditions are really not that bad,” he wrote in his annual letter to investors, a copy of which was obtained by The Post.

Singer, in the Jan. 30 letter, predicts that “over a period of coming weeks and months, a growing number of leveraged and high-cost producers will shut down production and/or file for bankruptcy.”